’To form a society, a club, let us say.  Not at all like the ordinary clubs.  There are plenty of places where men can meet to talk about what ought to be done for the working class; my idea is to bring the working class to talk of what it can do for itself.  And not how it can claim its material rights, how to get better wages, shorter hours, more decent homes.  With all those demands I sympathise as thoroughly as any man; but those things are coming, and it seems to me that it’s time to ask what working men are going to do with such advantages when they’ve got them.  Now, my hope is to get a few men to see—­what you, I know, see clearly enough—­that life, to be worthy of the name, must be first and foremost concerned with the things of the heart and mind.  Yet everything in our time favours the opposite.  The struggle for existence is so hard that we grow more and more material:  the tendency is to regard it as the end of life to make money.  If there’s time to think of higher things, well and good; if not, it doesn’t matter much.  Well, we have to earn money; it is a necessary evil; but let us think as little about it as we may.  Our social state, in short, has converted the means of life into its end.’

He paused, and Gilbert looked hearty agreement.

‘That puts into a sentence,’ he said, ’what I have thought through many an hour of work.’

’Well, now, we know there’s no lack of schemes for reforming society.  Most of them seek to change its spirit by change of institutions.  But surely it is plain enough that reform of institutions can only come as the natural result of a change in men’s minds.  Those who preach revolution to the disinherited masses give no thought to this.  It’s a hard and a bad thing to live under an oppressive system; don’t think that I speak lightly of the miseries which must drive many a man to frenzy, till he heeds nothing so long as the present curse is attacked.  I know perfectly well that for thousands of the poorest there is no possibility of a life guided by thought and feeling of a higher kind until they are lifted out of the mire.  But if one faces the question with a grave purpose of doing good that will endure, practical considerations must outweigh one’s anger.  There is no way of lifting those poor people out of the mire; if their children’s children tread on firm ground it will be the most we can hope for.  But there is a class of working people that can and should aim at a state of mind far above that which now contents them.  It is my view that our only hope of social progress lies in the possibility of this class being stirred to effort.  The tendency of their present education—­a misapplication of the word—­must be counteracted.  They must be taught to value supremely quite other attainments than those which help them to earn higher wages.  Well, there is my thought.  I wish to communicate it to men who have a care for more than food and clothing, and who will exert themselves to influence those about them.’